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• • September 11, 2010 at 2:44 pm #56981
    anotherdesigner

    Participant

    I am in a frustrating place working on a 500 page book where I need to deliver a pdf of thumbnails of the book pages every week to the editor and photo editor for reference. InDesign will let you print the docs as thumbnails to a printer, but will not let you select that option when exporting to pdf.

    I found a workaround which was creating a postscript file and then using distiller. BUT…then I installed Snow Leopard.

    Now, apparently Snow Leopard disables the pdf driver that was needed to do this, and suddenly my workaround doesn't work.

    I posted on the adobe forum and no one seemed to have an answer except possibly using the contact sheet function in Bridge, or that possibly upgrading to Acrobat 9 might help.

    I tried the contact sheet function in Bridge by exporting my book as spreads to a single pdf (fullsize), THEN extracting as single files, then going into Bridge and trying a contact sheet.

    • The contact sheet function through Bridge and Adobe Photoshop creates an ENORMOUS file and ties up my machine for hours. Not good when all I want to do is run off a quick overview of what I've done to the client.
    • The contact sheet function through Brindge and In Design works better and creates a much smaller file, but in kind of an ugly setup. That's not so much of a problem, but then I noticed that the body text of the book wasn't showing in the final pdf. Now, granted, its not like you can really read it at that size. BUT my client likes to see it in there greeked so he can tell what text is in the book and what text is still forthcoming.

    I would like to know if any of you smart Indesign forum heads have any wisdom or suggestions? For something that seems like it should be SO SIMPLE its taking me countless hours of troubleshooting just to make this dumb pdf every week.

    Specific Questions:

    • Anyone have success printing thumbnails to a pdf of an entire book from InDesign?
    • I am about to upgrade to CS4. Will doing that give me any new options?
    • Will upgrading to acrobat 9 somehow solve it and how?
    • Does CS5 have any improvements to this?

    Thanks!!! I appreciate any answers or thoughts you may have. Except for “Why would you want to do that?” That's not an acceptable answer. Its very logical that a book designer would want to see their multi-page book as thumbnails and easily show this to a client. (Sorry, touchy, but I have seen that comment before)

    (I have Adobe InDesign CS3 running on my machine and Acrobat 8, and I'm using an Intel Mac Pro Tower.)

  • September 11, 2010 at 8:37 pm #56983
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    I was able to create a PDF of thumbnails in Snow Leopard. I'm using ID CS5 and Acro 9, but I don't think it makes a diff.

    In InDesign, go to File > Print and set up the thumbnails how you want them, and anything else. Then just choose PostScript fie from the Printer dropdown menu.

    Do you not have that option in your Printer menu? I didn't do anything special to my system to get it to appear there.

    AM

  • September 11, 2010 at 9:33 pm #56985
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    It is most helpful if you have the PPD for Acrobat. Here's some details on what happened and how to do it:

    https://mymacfixes.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-can-i-still-create-postscript-files.html

  • September 11, 2010 at 9:35 pm #56986
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Sorry, should also have said: No, upgrading to newer acrobat or CS5 or whatever won't help. You just can't print to PDF anymore. It's incredibly unfortunate, and I wish Adobe and Apple could come up with a good workaround, but I'm not holding my breath.

  • May 29, 2014 at 11:54 am #68719
    Matt Mayerchak

    Participant

    You can print thumbnails to a postscript file in InDesign, and then turn that postscript file to a PDF with either Distiller or Preview. But, in my tests, I can only get it to work if the page size for the thumbnails document is letter size. When I try to export them on Tabloid-sized pages, the distilled PDF shows the thumbnails but they are just cropped off at the 8.5×11 page size. I have not found a way to make InDesign export a thumbnail postscript file that can be distilled into tabloid-sized pages.

    If anyone knows how to get a tabloid-sized thumbnail page pdf, please let me know. But at least, it is possible to make a book map PDF from an existing document, if 8.5×11 pages will suffice.

  • January 10, 2015 at 4:05 pm #72621
    Josh Freeman

    Member

    This page hasn’t had much activity. Does anyone know how to generate a pageful of thumbnails (like a page plan) of a publication in ID CC 2014? Have they fixed this? Distiller is apparently no longer supported, I can’t find a Postscript PPD or app or whatever now gets installed in Username > Library > Printers >. Any news on this topic?

  • March 19, 2015 at 7:41 am #74037
    Evelyn Shapiro

    Member

    This topic is of interest to me as well right now. Working on a 184-page book, so I can probably live with the Postcript file option but it seems crazy to have to employ a work-around for something so basic. I’m still working in CS5.

  • March 19, 2015 at 8:37 am #74039
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    freeassociates and Evelyn Shapiro:
    No, there has been no change. However, Distiller IS still part of Acrobat. It’s pretty easy to print to a PostScript file and then just convert that to a PDF in Acrobat Pro (just select File > Create > PDF from File.

  • March 19, 2015 at 10:12 am #74052
    Evelyn Shapiro

    Member

    Thanks, David!

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